Sunday, January 18, 2004

Through The Looking Glass

Maybe this has been covered before and I missed it, but the following comment about the space initiative from Scarborough Country just blew me away:

REP. TOM FEENEY ®, FLORIDA: Well, in the first place, Joe, I actually am very excited about the president‘s proposal, even though I‘m one of the leading fiscal conservatives, voted against the recent Medicare proposal, partly because it does bust our budget, in my view.

But let me say this. Bottom line, Joe, exploration is important. Research is important. But somebody on the face of the Earth is going to control and dominate space in the next several decades and centuries. If it‘s not the United States, it may be a hostile nation, a hostile set of nations, or even a hostile or rogue terrorist group.

This is a matter in part of national security and homeland defense. If we lose our dominance of low Earth and high Earth orbit, bottom line is, we‘re going to risk our very security in the United States of America.

[...]

Ultimately, somebody will dominate space. If it is not the United States, it‘s going to be somebody very hostile to our interests. We can‘t permit that to happen. And NASA, while it needs to work closer with the Defense Department, NASA is part of America‘s leadership and dominance in the future of space exploration and in protecting our security and homeland.

The PNAC paranoids have long believed that we should weaponize space. This reasoning isn't really that far out for that crowd.